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The Weird Week in Review

Dog Elected Mayor of Minnesota Town

Duke is a 7-year-old Great Pyrenees who lives in Cormorant, Minnesota. He was elected mayor of the town by a landslide over his opponent, store owner Richard Sherbrook. The exact vote count was not revealed, but Duke got the vast majority of the town’s twelve votes. Sherbrook even voted for Duke. The tiny town was established in 1874, but has never had a mayor before. The new mayor will be sworn in Saturday. As for his salary, he will be paid in dog food, a year’s supply donated by Tuffy’s Pet Food.

This Cat’s Hobby is Riding the Bus

Fee Jeanes and her family moved to Bridport, Dorset, UK, 19 months ago, to a home near the bus station. Their 15-year-old cat Dodger quickly made friends with bus drivers and riders, who would even feed the cat occasionally. Jeanes recently found out her cat has been riding around on bus trips in his spare time.

"He is an old boy and is very friendly. At first Dodger kept going to the bus station because people there fed him tit-bits and scraps of food.

"But then he started climbing on board the buses because they are almost like greenhouses when it is sunny.

"Then last week I found out he had travelled to Charmouth and back, which is a 10 mile round trip.

"I hadn't seen him all morning until my daughter Emily told me one of her friends had just seen him on the bus at Charmouth.

The bus drivers know the cat well, and make sure Dodger gets off at his home stop when the day ends. The bus company says they do not encourage the cat to ride, but don’t mind him. As a senior citizen, he is eligible for free rides.

Woman Tries to Stop Plane on Runway

A woman scaled the fence at the airport in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Sunday to stop a plane from taking off. As she ran across the tarmac, one plane that had just landed had to be diverted. The 37-year-old woman had earlier gone to an airline desk and asked the company to stop a plane from taking off because she believed her partner was leaving on it to go see another woman. After the unnamed woman was caught, she was taken to a hospital with cuts and bruises. The airport fence has three miles of barbed wire for security. The woman’s partner was not on the plane. The RCMP says she will not face charges, but airport officials will review their security measures.

Raccoons Compete in Laundry Contest

Raccoons are famous for washing their food before eating it, so why not put them to work washing clothes? A zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, staged a washing contest between their raccoons, named Masha and Artem. The raccoons were given tiny pieces of clothing to wash and they went to work, but had a tendency to interfere with each other. Zoo visitors judged the two on their quality of work and their enthusiasm, and the contest was declared a draw. You can see a video here.

Pilot’s Arm Falls Off While Landing Plane

A UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch report revealed an incident in February in which a pilot was landing a small commuter jet in Belfast when his arm fell off.

The 46-year-old pilot, described byFlybe as among is “most experienced and trusted” pilots, wears a prosthetic limb and said that he believed he had securely fixed the arm in place earlier, but with heavy winds, once he deactivated the Dash 8 aircraft’s autopilot as he prepared to land the plane that’s when the arm troubles began.

Asked why a pilot with only one arm was flying a plane in the first place, Flybe’s safety director, Captain Ian Baston, said that the budget airline had a policy of equal opportunity employment and therefore “in common with most airlines, we do employ staff with reduced physical abilities.”

The pilot lost control of the plane only briefly and still guided it to a safe and bumpy landing using one arm. He promised to secure his arm better in the future.

Man Reports Prostitutes for Charging Too Much

An unnamed 55-year-old man in Sweden called police in Gothenberg to report he had been robbed. When police arrived in Rosenlund, a red light strict, the man admitted that he gave two women money for sex, but they had overcharged him (the equivalent of $436 each for an hour) and he felt cheated. The strange part is that selling sex is not against the law in Sweden, but paying for it is illegal. So the police charged the man who complained, and he faces a fine of 24,500 kronor ($3,561), for reporting his own crime.

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Also on Mental Floss:

DID YOU KNOW? Marlon Brando hated memorizing lines so much that he posted cue cards everywhere to help him get through scenes.
He even asked for lines to be written on an actress's posterior. (That request was denied.)